Resurrection of the Body

It is traditional, and true, to say that the resurrection of the body is still future. What Paul calls the “redemption of our body” (Rom 8) has not occurred; and what he describes as the springing up of a plant from the seed of the dead body (1 Cor 15) is not yet seen, except in Jesus, to whom the descriptions of 1 Cor 15 apply preeminently.

But: We have become partakers of the resurrection already, through union with Christ. And that present resurrection is emphatically not a resurrection of the soul or the spirit only. In Rom 6, Paul argues that those who have been joined with Christ’s death in baptism have died to sin and are liberated to walk in newness of life. This new life that we have in the Risen Christ is bodily life, as Paul highlights in Rom 6:12, 13, 19. We are already raised in Jesus, and that resurrection already takes a bodily form, as our bodies are molded by the form of teaching to which we are committed and as we enact the liturgy of Christian living.